Well first off, we got the biggest snowfall we’ve had in the last few years yesterday. It snowed from Sunday morning to Monday morning, for a total of eighteen inches or so. It was also very cold, so the snow was dry and powdery. I went out Sunday evening with Jeannie to do the fist round of shoveling, and there was already over a foot. I went out this morning with Michele to do round two, including re-clearing everything from the night before and cleaning off her car. At lunchtime I went out a third time to finish off the apron of the driveway where the plow had passed, and to clean of my car and Jeannie’s. We had ample warning the storm was coming, so Saturday I got out my snowblower to see if it still worked — happily it did; I haven’t used it in several years — and filled up my little portable gas can. Now everything is cleared up and there’s no snow in the forecast but plenty of fresh snow on the ground. I think I’m gonna play hooky and go skiing one day this week.
It’s been a very productive January so far. On the Global Jukebox project, the style and UI redesign work is substantially completed. This was a major piece of work that took me about six months to finish, and touched many areas of the code, user workflows, and practically all of the css. Meanwhile Nick has made additions to the data architecture to let the app model taxonomy data for language families and peoples, as alternatives modes to the geographic taxonomy, and display them in the map and wheel. Another big piece of work, and I just approved his PR and merged in his branch. Still lots of stuff to do before the upcoming 4.0 release, but these are a couple important milestones.
The other thing going on these days is I’ve been practicing tons of guitar, learning Martin’s guitar solos for the song Frozen Ocean on the upcoming record Spellbound. This is the first time I’ve really played lead guitar, and it’s a fun challenge. The song actually has three guitar solos, a light atmospheric one in the beginning and ending, and a heavy one in the middle. They all have some twisty phrasing, with bendy notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs, as well as long sustained notes. So phrasing is very important, and so is tone. At this point I’ve been woodshedding for a few weeks, and have laid down a number of takes, steadily improving. I think I may actually be able to edit together an acceptable solo from what I have tracked, but I’m still trying to nail it consistently every take. But there’s other stuff to do, it may be time to move on.